With that he was gone.
“Come on,” Jake said. “He’s right. Let’s hide in the dunes.”
We crouched down in a pocket between two dunes. I lay flat on my belly in the cold sand and peered through the tall sea grass, focusing on the bright line of the surf.
Tobias was back a few minutes later.
<It’s them,> he said. He came to rest on a piece of driftwood. <It’s a group from The Sharing. Chapman is with them.> He turned his head to look at Jake. <Tom is with them, too>
The Sharing is a front organization for the Yeerks. Supposedly it’s this group for all ages, like Girl Scouts or whatever. In reality it’s a way for the Controllers to try and recruit new voluntary hosts. As impossible as it may seem, some humans actually decide to become hosts for the Yeerks. The Yeerks like it that way. It’s easier for them to have a voluntary host instead of a host that resists their control.
The Sharing is very subtle, of course. People are brought along very slowly, over time. New members have no idea what it’s all about at first. They think it’s just fun and games.
I don’t know when they tell the members what’s really happening. By then I guess it’s too late. They either become hosts voluntarily, or, like Jake’s brother Tom, they are taken anyway.
“Tom is with them?” Jake asked.
<I’m pretty sure,> Tobias said. <Some of the senior members — Chapman and Tom — are following behind the others. I could hear some of what they were saying. They’re very worried about that fragment of Andalite ship>
“So it is Andalite?” Rachel asked, excited.
<I guess so,> Tobias said. <I heard something else, too>
The way he hesitated made me tense up. “What?”
<Something about Visser Three having visions. That’s what they said. Visions. I guess the visions made the Visser cranky. He was on the mother ship at the time and decided to shove a Hork-Bajir out of an airlock because he broke the Visser’s concentration>
“It’s because of Visser Three’s Andalite body,” Marco said.
“That’s the connection. These dreams or visions or whatever they are must be some kind of communication that’s only supposed to be heard by Andalites.”
Suddenly I saw the line of flashlights swing into view. There must have been twenty people strung across the beach, all looking down at the sand, moving forward slowly.
“They’re searching for any other fragments,” I whispered.
A part of the line stopped moving. I heard someone yelling. Others came running up, excited.
“What did they find?” Jake wondered.
“I don’t …” Then, in a flash, it came to me. “Our footprints! Four sets of fresh footprints that suddenly turn off into the dunes!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake hissed. “Now!”
Too late!
The flashlight beams raced across the rippling sand and up the side of the dune. In an instant a dozen flashlight beams focused on the notch where we crouched.
We slithered back, down and out of sight. Then we jumped up and ran.
“We should morph!” Rachel gasped as we stumbled over the sinking sand.
“No!” Marco said. “Tracks. We would leave tracks that went from human to animal.”
“Get them!” someone yelled. Chapman, I think. He’s our assistant principal at school. I knew his voice from hearing him yell in the hallways.
Jerky, wild beams of light danced all around us. We ducked and ran as fast as we could. But running across the sand was like running through quicksand.
“There! There! I see them!”
A beam of light swept over me. I could see my shadow, long and twisted, projected on the sand.
I dodged left, out of the light. Just in time.
BAM! BAM!
Gunfire!
Someone was shooting at me.
<JOIN THE FIGHT>
ANIMORPHS™
THE INVASION
THE VISITOR
THE ENCOUNTER
THE MESSAGE
About the Author
K. A. Applegate’s ANIMORPHS series has sold millions of copies worldwide, and alerted the world to the presence of the Yeerks. She is also the author of the bestselling Remnants and Everworld series, Home of the Brave, and the Roscoe Riley Rules series.
Copyright
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Copyright © 1996 by Katherine Applegate
Cover art by Craig White
Cover design by Steve Scott
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.SCHOLASTIC, ANIMORPHS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, July 2011
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
e-ISBN: 978-0-545-38928-0